Have a blessed Ramadan everyone

Baghdad International green zone

'Hello'

'Hello , can you hear me ? '

'Yes perfectly '

'I'm calling on behalf of the prime minister office ..we've already sent you an email ,this is just to confirm what is stated in that....'

'I've seen the email '

'Great , do you recognize the place from where we gonna pick you and the rest of the candidates '

'Not really ..the map attached wasn't easy to follow '

'Ok the place is exactly near a ......'

On the day of the interview

Just so you know ,This wasn't my first interview , after 2 interviews I was short listed together with a number of other doctors ..to my surprise I couldn't recognize a single face ...all other candidates were ....new!

'Mommmm !!!'

'What's wrong ? A blast ...'

'Relax nothing I'm alright ..its just that I think ..well this is just a different offer , I'm not sure..what shall I do?'

I finally did go with the rest to the green zone ...

'There is only one explanation doctor ...You have  submitted your application twice to both offers'

As a matter of fact I did '><'

Shoot

Series of unfortunate break ups

5 months ago 

'Care to explain ?'

'It was just something that everybody our age is doing nowadays '

'?! so it did happen ?'

'you are making a fuss out of nothing'

Of course  this is my side of the story , but I can assure you it wasn't nothing .. No gal I know would tie the knot with a guy who believes in the open relationships crap ....end of discussion .

3 months ago 

'I thought about us for a long time and I think it would be better if we end it now ...please I don't want to offer any explanations .. I prefer to keep my reasons to myself so please don't ask me why ...' and the letter keeps on this way , I was quite surprised to say the least !! a break up email ! Well  that's new one i did what he said though ... I didn't feel like I want to know the reason behind his sudden decision ...the guy is simply irrational ...the world turned out to be full of such people , I wonder why no one has ever warned me about that before

 I felt......hmmm nothing ! Maybe because the guy was a jerk ! I don't know!

3 days ago 

'I really think that we should talk more '

Yea well I really didn't think likewise ..there wasn't anything left to say...we aren't a match ..not even close ..the only reason  I didn't break up with him earlier was my parents .... I just couldn't cope with his egocentric  silly attitude  anymore 

Any regrets? No ...i do believe , it ended for the best to all of us

Casper the friendly ghost

I've been planning to blog for so long but I guess my procrastination had beaten all my prior attempts to do so  ...not this time though .... Come see why !

If you had the chance to read my previous posts  , you might have guessed that I'm already doing my second year residency in baghdad ...

After a long struggle with the corrupted ministries in my beloved free country ,I have managed to retrieve my post in the university  last January ..

With my uni post , my internship in the attached teaching hospital , All was going super great career wise .I was physically exhausted but un proportionally euphoric ...life was pink !!

'you're the optimistic face in this miserable cancer team' my senior used to say 

Well this was true , until the beginning of June when the chief residents called for a meeting with manager of the hospital  just to tell him that of all the residents in the floor i was getting 'special treatment' from the seniors of medical department 

So another meeting was set , This time I was part of it ..I had very little to say in response to that mainly because it was  so ridiculous a claim that I could not imagine the management of the hospital would be serious about  it .... the next day It was all in writing ' undisciplined doctor who always gets away with her mistakes because of the special treatment she's getting ' ..bottom line in less than 2 working days I  was fired from my job in the hospital ...yes fired ! 

It took me awhile to grasp what was happening i mean it all seemed so untrue , simply a bad dream !   

But there was no time for any contemplation.... I had to react quickly to get my job back ... which I would've never been able to do without the support of friends and family ... 

It took me along time to come with a convincing theory of why all this had happened .. Why a resident at least eight years older than me worked so hard for more than a month to pull out such a thing ??! It's true that we're in a competitive training but that simply does not cut it ....

 I was working harder than anyone else because this is just the way it is in my culture as a woman you have to work so much harder to get the same recognition of your male counterpart ... Maybe I worked harder than I should be !! 

In the end , I was successful in reversing their decision but I guess without sufficient evidence, they already knew I would be able to do that ... A message was meant to be sent by all that and I got their message ....

I left the floor altogether , quit giving presentation and other med activities ...i even quit going to the canteen !! In  other words, I decided to be invisible....and to starve :P

Junior High reunion!

After all those years, I ran into one of my junior high friends in a beauty salon …she looks a bit different…

'Wow …look at you, you're …….big'

'Yeah, well ' she broke into a shy smile

'How far are you now?'

'I'm about to finish my seventh month…'

'And how is it so far?'

'Well, apart from the fact that it’s a girl  ...Everything is alright'

And we giggled a lot ….See, we Iraqis prefer baby boys…I believe it's something culturally ingrained within the Iraqi spirit

She had finished medical school too (not the one I went to) but the point is she is also a doctor...I think I'd heard about that but because we don’t have mutual friends we didn’t stay in touch ;)

'Cancer treatment are you serious?! You really want to specialize in that?' 

'Hmm well I mean I haven’t made my mind yet ' ok that's a lie but you would do the same if she looked at you the way she did  

'It's not too late…. you can change your residency training, pick something else'

'Yea I'll have to think about it inshalla ..So tell me what else has happened during those years still in contact with the gals?'  I was desperately trying to shift gears over here!

But before she could respond, she was called..It was her turn , she took off her scarf and a light tone of burgundy red is all over the place! and that's when I truly know that she hasn’t changed a bit ..I mean her hair was natural oak brown back at junior high but she was and still is bright in spirit :) and that’s when I realized how much I missed her !

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity

Alumni 2010 : Gossip

'Shut up ' I couldn’t believe it

'I'm telling you, that’s what happened'

'No way  ...I...I can't understand  ...I mean …so you're saying that you simply quit, just like that …quit'

'I just didn’t like it, working at the hospital day in and day out'

'Seriously what were you thinking? You're quitting your job with no plan B ...what's that?'

'I figured staying in Baghdad instead of going to Kirkuk and not having to go to the hospital every day, this way I will have  time to get  ready for the masters. I'm thinking Basic sciences, so I don’t have to deal with clinical work'

Me at this point… POKER FACE… he went on saying 'My plan is to get Masters in Baghdad…If I get accepted I will start December this year'

I couldn’t help it at this point I simply burst into laughter...' and until then what are you gonna tell people!?Hi I'm Bilal I used to be a doctor and now …now I'm a housewife'

I got slightly taken back because it wasn’t that hard to sense the uncertainly in his voice besides ,after the explosion that  took away his dad's life , everybody kinda expected him to step up and take care of the family instead of relying on them .anyways , I laughed wholeheartedly today thanks to his crazy ideas :D

'Did you know that Mohamed smacked Duaa in the ER?' if I have to name one thing in Bilal that havent changed, it would be his overwhelming interest in other people's business :P

' Really! Do they work at the same hospital?'

'Nope, then the security kicked him out of the ER'

'Is that for real?! I've always thought this couple was weird'

'Duaa left work altogether after the incident .And Mohamed is in Russia'

'Russia ?' I gasped

'Aha..he met this Russian girl in Lebanon and he wanted to meet her family'

'Lebanon?!  Where in Lebanon? You can find Russian girls in one place only.....'

'Exactly'

'Noooo' I didnt even want to consider the possibility

'Yes and he wants to marry her'

'Marry a hooker!! Good for Duaa …..Whats wrong with you people ,You studied  your entire life to quit?'

'You know Sarmad, he had left too… he's in Turkey right now'

'Wow ..no wonder why we're understaffed'

The Help

7:00 am in the morning; sorry Rebecca ;your cute, but I had no plans to wake up that early..

'hello! Morning Doc…where are you?'

Don't mean to be superstitious or anything but waking up to that voice is always bad!

'Ah You're home.. Great..so you have nothing to do today ..come to the hospital'

'Its my off day Zaid'

'I know, I'm sorry but we're two doctors short today'

'Hello !?still there ?'

8:00 am

'Hey Danya ,where are you ?'

'Hey there Doc, I'm home'

'WHAT ?'

'I'm just about to leave now Safa ,relax, zaid had just called and ..did anything happen?

'Yeah ..its Dr.Muth there is a patient in….bla bla'

 'on ma way'

8:00 pm

'hellllooo doc Aren’t you hungry?! Come to the canteen ,my recess is almost done ,hurry up I dont want to eat alone'

'Safa! Are you in the hospital !? Your duty was yesterday'

 'So was yours darlin'

'I'll leave the floors in a minute… wait for me'

3:00 am

'I want you to leave the ER now'

well it was 3 am…someone is telling me to leave my duty .. Theoretically I should've jumped with joy but I didn't. I was too shocked to react this way…see this is not the way things are happening around here … by default, senior doctors  use you whenever they can..

'But..'

'This is beyond discussion,I want you back in 3 hours '

 I genuinely wanted to drop the thing off my mind but what he did was so odd that I couldn’t sleep at all..

6:00 am

Do you want to know why I asked you to leave?

YES

'The ER didn’t look safe to me'

'hmm ok '
though I couldn't get it ,I was too tired to argue..that I just agreed with whatever he was saying ...

8:00 am

'Are you coming home today?'

'Yes I am' and this time I'm switching my mobile off  ;)